After more than 2 years of digging, the unconventional 200 meter, 50-story building which will be Tel Aviv largest office tower upon completion in 2016 is now starting to take shape. Azrieli Sarona will offer 125,000 square meters of working space, a three-story, 11,000-sq.-m. mall and a seven-story underground parking lot for 1,600 vehicles. It will be the country’s second-tallest building, behind Ramat Gan’s 244-meter, 68-story, multipurpose Moshe Aviv Tower.
David Azrieli purchased the land from the Israel Lands Authority for NIS522m ($139m) in 2011 and the tower will be built at the eastern end of the Sarona compound near Menachem Begin Road and Kaplan Street, diagonally opposite the three existing Azrieli towers. Architect Moshe Zur who also designed the 17 Arlozorov tower partnered with David Azrieli Architects to design the building. According to the Jerusalem Post, the architects are using simple geometry to create the effect that the building is facing the sea, which lies almost 3km to the west. The tower will be located half a block south of the company's Azrieli Center project. The office and commercial project is part of the Sarona compound in central Tel Aviv. The project offers a greater than usual number of building rights, however existing height limitations dictated a particularly large, wide building mass.
The architectural solution was to create two vertical, rectangular masses that lie alongside each other and twist slightly around two different axes. The result is a twisted tower, the base of which lies parallel to the Sarona compound pedestrian routes. Every viewpoint of the tower offers a new, different perspective. The division into two masses creates vertical proportions, which, together with the twisted effect, forms a spatial, sculptural three-dimensional object that makes a dramatic impact on its surroundings.
